Chapter 38: Divine
|Preceded by = Chapter 37: Microsat 5 |Followed by = Chapter 39: The Great Secret }} Divine is the thirty-eighth chapter of Gunnerkrigg Court. It starts . Summary Zimmy is seen stumbling through her own hallucinations, suddenly running into Gamma while she pulls Annie's cut off her face. Zimmy says she doesn't want to go, but Gamma convinces her someone need her help. The scene then switches to a hospital room, where Annie is in the bed, unconscious, with Kat, Robot, Rey, and shadow surrounding her. Zimmy and Gamma then show up, asking what happened to Annie. After a short conversation, Zimmy and Gamma notice that through Zimmy's hallucinations they can see a pigeon upon Kat's head. The pidgeon speaks Kat's true thoughts, but Kat is not aware of its presence. Zimmy comments on Kat's headband, telling her that she's been hearing "things that might make yeh dress diff'rent? Act diff'rent? Make you wanna remind people yer still a girl?" Kat responds defensively, asking her where she heard that, and Zimmy tells her it was the rats. Kat responds by saying that there are no rats in the Court, but Zimmy just says "Haha, well then, who knows?". Kat tells Robot to kick her out, but when he doesn't respond, realizes that Zimmy has knocked out Robot, Shadow, and Rey. She fearfully demands Zimmy tell her what she did, but Zimmy asks her if she wants her help or not, and Kat allows her to continue. By touching Annie's hand, she is able to enter her mind; once going into Annie's dreams, she sees Annie, dreaming about her summer in the forest, with the ring of teeth around her wrist - Coyote's bind - and Kamlen and Jones, leading Zimmy to wonder if she has a "thing" for either one. Within the dream, Annie picks up a mask and the location changes to the tree, on the day of Chapter 6: A Handful of Dirt. Zimmy picks up the mask, now at Annie's side, and finds her copying Kat's homework. She picks up the mask, and Annie resists, but Zimmy comments that she's got "no fight" in her, and reaches into her hair, where she finds five long bones surrounding Annie's fire elemental spirit. Back in the hospital room, she can still see the bones, coming out of Annie's chest and continuing up into a void in the sky. Somehow aware that the bones are a result of whatever it is Anthony has done, Zimmy touches the bones and draws herself deeper into the dream. As she gets closer, she sees Anthony's silhouette and punches it, telling him it's a "message from your little girl". She returns to the hospital room, beginning to panic, and continues to hallucinate, seeing Jack Hyland and Annie, who is wearing the mask. Annie, within the hallucination, calls Zimmy a "deranged psychopath", which Zimmy responds to by calling her father a jerk. Annie, in the hallucination, throws Zimmy across the room; in real life, Annie remains unconscious and motionless, but Zimmy is physically knocked to the ground. Zimmy says that Annie has gotten her fight back but begins to panic, cowering in the corner of the room. Kat attempts to help her, but Zimmy tells her she's terrified of her, at which point Kat's possible true etheric form is shown. Gamma then returns, and when Kat asks Zimmy why she came if she was so scared, Zimmy tells her that "you can't always run from what scares ya". Gamma takes Kat's headband, and the two disappear. Annie wakes up, with no memory of what has just happened. Kat explains it to her, and tells Annie that she had a dream Zimmy came and helped her, implying that she doesn't know the previous events were real. Annie comments that she had a dream about Zimmy as well, where she called her dad a jerk and punched him in the face, and Kat notices that her headband is gone. Kat asks her whether she thinks her dad had anything to do with her collapsing, but Annie defends him, saying he's probably "off doing important work somewhere". Kat gives her her makeup, but Annie doesn't take it, telling Kat that she might put it on later. Elsewhere, Zimmy and Gamma discuss the previous events. Gamma - who has Kat's headband - tells Zimmy that she thought she was very brave, and asks her if she's sure she doesn't want them to know she helped. Zimmy responds that she "can't have anyone out there thinking I'm a nice person", and Gamma tells her that she thinks she's nice, to which Zimmy says "that's all that matters to me". Characters and Places Featured Characters * Zimmy * Gamma * Antimony Carver * Katerina Donlan * Kamlen * Jones * Anthony Carver * Jack Hyland Places * Zimmyngham * Gillitie Wood * Decontamination Habitat Notes and Trivia * At the start of the chapter, when Zimmy is running through Zimmyngham, she stumbles and Annie's etheric scar appears on her face. She pulls it off, yelling that it's "not mine", and it disappears. * Both lines spoken by Jack on are taken directly from in Chapter 34: Faraway Morning, but Annie's line is slightly paraphrased. Dream Symbolism * The ring of teeth around her arm symbolises the wristband Coyte gave her that could snap off her arm. ** Kamlen putting a finger under the wristband symbolises him giving her the wrap around her arm to hide it. * Annie's mask, which is consistently seen as a symbol throughout the comic, could symbolize many things. Most likely, it symbolizes Annie hiding her true self and concealing her fire elemental spirit from the rest of the world. ** Jones gives Annie the mask, which probably symbolizes when she brought Annie her makeup in the forest. Annie's makeup consistently symbolizes a mask, hiding her true appearance and self from others. ** By taking off her mask in the decontamination habitat and using it to hide Kat's homework, Annie shows that she feels she doesn't have to hide herself from Kat - with the exception of the cheating, which is later confirmed when she tells Kat that the reason she never asked her for help was because she didn't want her to think she was stupid. ** Annie becomes very angry when Zimmy tries to take the mask, but is too weak to fight back, and Zimmy's vision of Annie's fire elemental spirit is holding the mask in its hand. After Zimmy punches Anthony and enters the hallucination, Annie is wearing the mask again, which shatters when Zimmy calls her father a jerk. Zimmy responds to this by saying she has her fight back, in contrast to when she took the mask earlier and nothing happened, when she commented that Annie had no fight in her. ** After Annie wakes up, Kat offers her the makeup, but Annie refuses. Given the parallels drawn between the mask and Annie's makeup, it's possible that the symbolic shattering of the mask represented her deviating temporarily from the need to cover her face. She returns to this soon enough, but it disappears again when Anthony returns and orders her to take it off. References Category:Chapters